News Above the Noise—Week of March 24, 2024
1. Princess Kate Announces Her Cancer Diagnosis
When Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced her cancer diagnosis on Friday, it shocked the world—and many experts are saying it could shine a light on a troubling rise in certain cancers among people under 50. While details of the 42-year-old royal remain sparse, the news certainly highlights the importance of young people being aware that cancer is a possibility no matter how old you are and underscores how crucial it is to consider your risk factors and talk to your healthcare provider about screening. For more on this developing story, click here.
2. What to Know About the Clean Auto Rule
This week, the Biden administration announced a new regulation limiting tailpipe emissions from cars and light trucks that aims to chart a course toward a future of electric and hybrid cars. It’s a big deal in the fight against climate change—and it’s not a ban on gasoline-powered vehicles. So, what does the measure entail? You can read the details here.
3. “Boys Are Disappearing” From Mental Health Care, Say Experts
While much of the attention on youth mental health in recent years has focused on young girls, teenage boys are drowning in just as much depression and anxiety—but worse, many of their symptoms are left undetected and young men aren’t getting the help they need. “We have this very classic understanding of depression as being sad, being tearful, crying more, not eating as much and losing weight,” Dr. Lauren Teverbaugh, pediatrician and child psychiatrist at Tulane University in New Orleans, told NBC. “That’s just not how it looks for a lot of young boys.” To learn more, click here.
4. Young People are Struggling to Find Meaning
Around the world, members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, and related disorders at alarming rates—higher than any other generation for which we have data. This decline in mental health is alarming, and prompting many to wonder what happened. In this thoughtful article in The Atlantic, Jonathan Haidt writes that the answer can be stated simply, although the psychology underlying the issue is complex: “Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction.” What does this mean for our youth? Don’t miss this must-read.
5. Shadowing Trump’s Attacks on Mental Fitness: His Own Father’s Dementia
As 77-year-old Donald Trump seeks to return to the White House, he is using dementia as a political weapon—alleging without medical proof that President Biden is “cognitively impaired.” Yet Trump’s fixation on mental fitness actually followed years of watching his own father’s dementia. “Donald is no doubt fearful of Alzheimer’s,” a former senior executive at the Trump Organization told The Washington Post. “He’s not going to talk about and not going to admit to it. But it’s relevant because every day he is hitting Biden with whether or not he is capable mentally of doing the job.” To read more, click here.
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